Book 1: Part I: Season of New Leaves — Chapter 5: |
Chapter 5
We met team three walking out as we were heading to the inner courtyard.
“I really thought we would be going against you guys in the finals,” I said to Hiroshi.
“Same here, I thought we would win,” Hiroshi said regretfully. “If only this hadn’t happened…” He held out the horseshoe-shaped pusher. A large part of the bottom had been torn off.
“How did that happen?”
“One of the defenders smashed into it on accident,” Hiroshi said, running his finger over the broken edges. “The ball started rolling the wrong way and it took us over a minute to get it back on track.”
“In the end, team two won with a minute and thirty six seconds against a minute forty one seconds. That was just so cruel, don’t you think?” The most arrogant girl in the class, Misuzu, put her hand on Hiroshi’s shoulder and sighed.
“It’s their fault they hit you.”
“Well it was an accident, so what can you do about it,” Hiroshi said unconvincingly. “Be careful,” he said as he left. “Who knows what will happen in the finals.”
“Is it riding on a wheel?” Satoru whispered disbelievingly.
“We considered that too, and decided not to do it because the axle wouldn’t hold up. How strange. Isn’t it a bad idea to do this with clay?”
Shun squinted at the attacker.
“Look closely; it’s a ball, not a wheel.”
The main body of the pusher had a ball set into the bottom. Since you could only see about half of it, it looked like a wheel.
“It looks like the body is just riding on the ball. If something bumps into it, won’t it fall off?” Satoru said calculatingly. “They should have stuck it in all the way.”
“No, if they put it in as far as possible, it’ll be easy for sand to get in, which would be a disaster. But even as it is now, I think it would break soon anyway,” Shun said doubtfully.
“If sand stops the ball-wheel from moving, then it’s the same as just pushing it normally, right? They probably just want to get a good start to break through our defense,” Maria said calmly.
Our questions were answered as soon as the match started.
“Two of them…!” I exclaimed in surprise.
The two aces of team two, Ryou and Akira, were both controlling the pusher.
Ryou was probably operating the body of the pusher to direct the marble ball, while Akira concentrated on keeping the two halves together as well as removing anything that might jam the ball-wheel. Having two people use their canti in such close proximity is dangerous, so most people would avoid having multiple people control one piece, but in this case the benefits far outweigh the risk.
Since the ball-wheel didn’t create much friction against the ground, they could move it smoothly with their canti. Even when they were moving as fast as team five had been, they had perfect control over the marble ball.
Even though we tried as hard as we could to defend, the pusher zig-zagged easily through the gaps in our defenders.
Satoru’s defender pulled a sharp u-turn chasing after the pusher and crashed into Mamoru’s slow-moving one, sending it flying off the field.
“It’s damaged,” I told Shun, sighing.
“Looks like it. That pusher is really something. Now we can only count on your idea working.”
We stopped controlling the defenders and stood by to monitor the bout. Seeing this, the members of team two seemed to think that we had given up and rushed ahead triumphantly. Then they came to an abrupt halt and looked around, bewildered.
“What’s going on? There’s no goal,” Manabu shouted at us.
“There is,” Shun replied.
“Where?”
“We don’t have to tell you guys anything,” Satoru said smugly.
“Hey, stop the time! Something’s wrong,” Manabu complained.
“Don’t you dare,” Maria warned the timekeeper, a student from team four. “Don’t stop the time until one side has won.
“I’m serious! How can we continue the match if there’s no goal?”
“Like I said, there is one,” Shun said calmly to the angry Manabu.
“Look for it. Though it’ll cost you time,” Satoru taunted.
Even as his teammate, I thought Satoru was being annoying. To the enemy, he must be absolutely infuriating.
“We’re just wasting our time if there’s no goal.”
“There is a goal. If there isn’t, then we’d be in violation of the rules, and lose the match,” Shun said quietly.
Manabu looked around suspiciously. If we could keep this up for a little longer, they will have wasted almost two whole minutes.
“…it’s hidden, isn’t it,” one of the members suddenly realized.
Although they scanned the field desperately, the goal was nowhere to be seen.
“This is cheating!” Manabu growled through gritted teeth.
“There’s no rule that says you can’t hide the goal.”
“Yes there is! Altering the field is a huge violation.”
“Well, we didn’t change the field in any way. Shall we give you a hint?” Satoru asked.
Afraid that he would let something slip in the heat of the moment, I quickly interrupted.
“We’ll tell you the trick later. But hadn’t you better keep looking? This is cutting into your time, you know.”
Manabu looked perplexed, but went back to searching for the goal. Even if he found it now, more than a minute would have passed. And it was also possible that he might just never find it. The goal was perfectly covered by the thin clay disk disguised to look like the sandy ground. Much like how a ray burrows part of itself into the ocean floor to blend in, the edge of the disk was concealed by sand. (Contrary to Satoru’s claim about not altering the field at all, what we were doing was probably just short of breaking the rules.)
For a while, team two pushed the ball around, searching fruitlessly for the goal. Then by a stroke of luck, they managed to roll on top of the disk. Since the disk was only made right before the match, it wasn’t properly strengthened and couldn’t hold up the weight of a ten kilo ball. It broke in half and the ball fell into the goal.
“Ah, it breaks too easily, just as we thought.”
“But it’s fulfilled its purpose. They took over three minutes so it’ll be an easy victory for us,” Satoru said optimistically.
We were all taken by his enthusiasm. There was no way team two’s defenders were strong enough to stop us for three minutes.
Even as we switched sides and moved our pusher onto the field, we were still full of confidence.
We didn’t realize anything was wrong until team two started approaching us in waves with over ten defenders. Each person controlled at least two and attacked indiscriminately, slamming relentlessly into our attackers. Since there were so many, we couldn’t stop them all. Some slipped through and headed straight for the ball.
Even in the face of the onrushing defenders, Shun kept moving the ball forward calmly. Since we still had three minutes to spare, there was no hurry.
We were almost halfway across the field; even though only a minute had passed, we could already see the goal up ahead. Even though team two had many defenders, they were small and light and didn’t have the strength to stop the pusher from continuing forward. Victory was within our grasp.
In that moment, the ball stopped jerkily as if held back by a tether. Shun looked startled. When he tried pushing the ball harder, something happened.
A defender came flying in from the side, slipped past the ball and rammed straight into the pusher.
With a high, clear sound like a struck bell, pieces of ceramic went flying through the air.
Everyone gasped. The defender flew off the field, and we saw that our pusher’s left arm was broken.
Even though the match hadn’t been stopped, all of us, and the members of team two, were frozen in shock. All except one person.
Another defender came in from the same direction and pushed the ball. It slowly rolled off the field.
Who did that? I looked over team two’s dumbfounded faces and glimpsed Manabu grinning broadly. Instinctively, I turned away, feeling like I had seen something I wasn’t supposed to.
“Hey! The hell are you doing?” Satoru shouted furiously. “You just…you just,” he couldn’t even bring himself to say the rest.
“Sorry, it was an accident,” Manabu said.
“An accident? That’s just an excuse,” Maria yelled.
“Okay, stop the time,” the Sun Prince stepped between us.
The timing of his appearance was impeccable; he had probably been watching us from somewhere.
“It’s unfortunate, but because of the accident, the final match is a draw.”
“What! But the other side violated the rules, right?” Shun said forcefully in a rare show of protest.
“No, it was just an accident. Both team one and team two can be considered winners, okay?”
Having heard what the teacher said, no one else dared to complain.
The tournament that had gotten the entire class riled up ended on this unexpected note.
“I can’t believe this. He definitely did it on purpose!” Maria seethed. “Team three even warned us before the match.”
“Yeah, no way it was an accident,” Mamoru said in agreement.
“He planned the whole thing,” Satoru chimed in. “Slipping past the ball, breaking the pusher’s arm, it was all part of the plan. Don’t you think so, Shun?”
Shun stayed silent, his arms crossed.
“What? Don’t tell me you believe him?”
Shun shook his head.
“No…I’m thinking about what happened before that.”
“Before?”
“The pusher suddenly stopped, almost as if it had hit a wall.”
“Huh?”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah. The pusher felt really strange. And it’s not like there was anything on the ground stopping it.”
We were at a loss for words. Shun had the sharpest senses out of all of us, and he wasn’t the type to just make up stuff like this.
In that case, the only possible explanation was that someone had used their cantus to stop our ball. Apart from breaking the tournament rule about using your cantus directly on the ball, the fact that someone had interfered with another person’s cantus – I’ve mentioned this before – was a blatant violation of the Code of Ethics. If two canti were to come in contact with each other, a rainbow interference pattern would appear and space would become distorted, creating an extremely dangerous environment.
In other words, someone in team two was okay with breaking the most fundamental of rules.
Imagining a person doing that was so disturbing it felt like the ground was about to give way beneath my feet. That day, we were silent on the way home. Everyone was probably in a state of shock. But even then, we didn’t know the true nature of the fear that writhed deep inside us.
During puberty, even the smallest problems often feel like the end of the world. But our young, naive minds do not stay worried for long; we soon forget what it was that was causing our anxiety in the first place.
In addition, thanks to a subconscious defense mechanism we call forgetfulness, even more serious issues that would cause us to question the world we live in disappear from our minds like wisps of smoke.
Once the ball tournament was over, we turned our attention to the most important event Sage Academy held each year, summer camp. Even though the name makes it sound happy and carefree, it was actually an action-packed week-long camp where the teams paddled up the Tone River and lived in tents without any adult supervision. We had to have our teacher approve our itinerary to make sure it didn’t clash with another team’s schedule, but that was the only input we would get from them. This would be our first time going outside the Holy Barrier since our visit to the Temple of Purity, so everyone was as excited and nervous as if we had been told we were going to explore a new planet.
Our anticipation and anxiety grew ever more intense each day, and every time we saw each other, someone had a new story or rumor or theory they had heard about summer camp. Although none of these discussions were based in fact, and thus weren’t actually helpful for our trip, they took our minds off of our worries.
And so, the bitter aftertaste from the unsatisfactory conclusion of the ball tournament did not linger long on our tongues. We did not remember the long-absent Reiko Amano, nor were we concerned with the fact that another student, Manabu Katayama, had disappeared from our midst.
Of course, this lack of thought itself is undeniable proof that our memories were being meticulously and deftly manipulated.
“Saki, row properly,” Satoru complained for about the thirtieth time.
“I am doing it properly, you’re the one that’s not cooperating,” I responded for the thirtieth time.
Canadian canoes are operated by a pair of rowers sitting in a line and moving in tandem, but if their movements weren’t synchronized properly, they could row forever and never get anywhere. What that meant was that Satoru and I, partnered by lottery, were the worst imaginable pair.
“Man, why is that pair so different from us?”
From our perspective, Maria and Mamoru were in perfect harmony. Even though we had only a two-hour lecture on how to operate the canoe the day before, they looked like they had been partners for years. Not only that, but Mamoru had enough spare time to entertain Maria with rainbows he made out of the spray from the boat’s wake.
“Watch them carefully. Mamoru is matching his speed with Maria. Since the person in front can’t see what’s going on behind them, it’s up to the second person to adapt to the first.”
“But Maria is actually rowing properly. You just keep looking at the scenery and forget to row at all,” Satoru continued to grumble false accusations.
The early summer breeze flowing down the wide expanse of the river felt wonderfully cool. I stop paddling for just a little while and take off my hat, letting the wind tease my hair. The towel around my shoulders waved like a cape, exposing the back of my sweaty T-shirt for the wind to dry. The rubber life vest was torturous to wear, but a necessary precaution.
All along the riverbanks were clumps of reeds, and the chirps of the great reed warbler could be heard coming from within.
Suddenly, I felt the canoe gather speed and glide forward smoothly. For a second I thought Satoru had seen the error of his ways and was rowing the boat with all his strength. But of course that wasn’t it.
I looked back and saw that he leaning on the side of the boat, with one hand under his chin and the other trailing in the water.
“What are you doing?” I asked seriously.
He looked up. “The river feels so nice, like the ocean, just without all the salty spray,” he said, completely missing my point.
“Weren’t you the one who said that we should go as far as we can without relying on our canti? You’ve given up already?”
“Don’t be silly. We could’ve done that if we were going downstream, but it’s too hard to row against the flow,” Satoru yawned.
“That’s why we were just offsetting that with our cantus so…”
“If you’re going to go to all that trouble, why not just use your cantus to propel the boat in the first place? Anyway, we could always row on the way back.”
It was pointless arguing with Satoru when he was already in lazy-mode. I turned my attention back to the scenery. Looking closely at Maria and Mamoru together, and Shun rowing by himself, I could tell that their canti were doing more than just canceling out the force of the river rushing against them. It seems like it’s only human nature to take the easy way out.
Shun waved at us from the riverbank and pointed at the reeds with his paddle. The other two canoes changed course and headed toward him.
“Look, a great reed warbler’s nest.”
The little nest was built at chest height, so I could see right into it if I stood up in the canoe. The canoe rocked from side to side; Satoru grabbed the sides for balance and peered out at it.
“Woah, it really is. But is it,”
The nest was about seven or eight centimeters in diameter, propped up carefully on three thick reeds. Inside were five small brown-speckled eggs.
“…really a warbler’s nest? It could be a haythatcher’s, right?”
To be honest, I couldn’t, and still can’t, tell the difference between the two.
The haythatcher gets its name from the fact that it builds its nest in fields of silver grass, but in reality, it more often makes it out of reeds near riverbanks.
“It’s the real thing,” Satoru said from his seat. “Haythatchers have to make a lot of nests, plus they don’t raise their young, so their nests are always crude-looking. See how this nest is in a place that’s hard to see from above? Most haythatcher nests are really exposed.”
“Also, you can easily tell from the way the edges of the nest look,” Shun added. “Reed warblers stand on the edge to take care of the young, so the edges are flat, whereas haythatchers just leave it the way it is once it’s finished, so the edges are pointy. Also, warblers sometimes use their own feathers to make the nest. Needless to say, haythatcher nests won’t have any feathers in them.”
Since boys often use fake haythatcher eggs to pull pranks on people, it was no wonder they were so knowledgeable about this. Even though none of us had ever been interested in those foul smelling things.
We made a note of where we found the nest along with a simple illustration of it, and continued on our way, keeping an eye out more.
Summer camp wasn’t just fun and games. It was part of our placement for science courses, so each group had to do research while at camp, and present it when they got back. Ours was a really vague topic called “Species Around the Tone River”. Before we left, we had been having a heated discussion about what exactly we should write about, and had just agreed on a starting point (isn’t that enough already?), when Satoru started telling one of his tall tales as an example.
“Blowdogs?” I burst out laughing. “Something that weird couldn’t possibly exist.”
“I’m telling you, they’re real,” Satoru said with a completely straight face.
Since Satoru always reacted so defensively to being doubted, we often laughed at the things he said, just to provoke him. We usually only half-believed his stories anyway, but this time, he was being too unbelievable.
“Some people have seen them recently.”
“Like who?” Maria asked.
“I don’t know their names.”
“See, it’s the same as always. He always insists there are witnesses, but when you ask for a name, he gets all vague all of a sudden,” I said triumphantly, but Satoru ignored me and went on. Why did he get such a kick out of fooling people?
“If you heard his name, you’d probably know who it was. He said that he met a blowdog at the foot of Mt. Tsukuba.”
“What did he go all the way to Mt. Tsukuba for?” Maria fell for Satoru’s story hook, line, and sinker, forgetting all about the problem of who the witness was.
“A job for the Board of Education, like a survey or something. They obviously don’t tell kids all the details. Anyway, when he got close to the mountain, a blowdog came lumbering out of a cave.”
Just as I started looking for holes in Satoru’s story, Mamoru spoke up.
“What did it look like?”
“It was about the size of a dog, completely black, with a fat torso. Its head was barely half the size of a normal dog’s and hung so low that it almost touched the ground.”
“Is that really a dog?”
“Who knows, it might not be.”
“It doesn’t seem particularly dangerous,” Maria said.
“Yeah. But if it gets mad, its body swells up like a balloon to warn its enemy to stay away. But if they provoke it even more…!”
“It puffs up bigger and bigger until it explodes, right? Does that really not sound dumb to you?” I cut in, but Satoru switched tactics in an instant.
“But that’s the problem.”
“Huh?”
“Doesn’t it completely defy common sense? If you wanted to fool a bunch of people, you’d come up with something more believable, right?”
A bunch of objections came to mind, but I kept quiet. If I said anything, it would mean that I was accepting his ridiculous story.
Still, it seems like Satoru felt he had got one over me.
“I’ve heard that blowdogs are messengers from god, but to me they’re just normal animals. There are a lot of animals that try to make themselves look bigger when provoked, blowdogs are just an extreme example. When it blows up, the enemy will likely be killed, or at least seriously injured,” he said.
Shun, who had been listening silently until now, spoke up. “Still, it sounds unbelievable.”
“Why?” Satoru asked sullenly.
“Because if this actually happened, wouldn’t blowdogs die before their enemies did? They’d become extinct in no time.”
It was a simple but irrefutable point. Satoru crossed his arms and pretended to contemplate the problem, but I was sure he wouldn’t be able to come up with anything.
Just when it looked like I was right, he started speaking as if there had never been a break in the conversation.
“…mhm. After he met the blowdog, he also saw an evil minoshiro.”
I almost fell out of my seat. “What do you mean ‘mhm’? Hello? What happened to the blowdog problem?”
“He backed off when he saw it swelling, so it didn’t explode. But who knows, maybe the whole thing about it exploding is fake anyway,” Satoru said, trying to slither out of the conversation like a lizard shedding its tail. “And then as he was climbing up Mt. Tsukuba, he encountered an evil minoshiro,” he opened his eyes wide in a show of surprise.
“Is that the same as a false minoshiro?” Mamoru asked.
“Yeah, at first glance it looks like a minoshiro, but if you look carefully, they’re completely different.”
“But why is it evil?” Maria asked, frowning.
“People who meet an evil minoshiro die before long.”
How absurd.
“So how did that guy die? He didn’t, right?”
“He probably will soon,” Satoru said, not batting an eyelid.
If we just left it here, it would be like every other time Satoru told one of his pointless stories. But Shun made a surprising proposal.
“Why don’t we do this for our summer camp report?”
“The evil minoshiro?” I was surprised.
“That, blowdogs, and other creatures. This is a rare opportunity, so I want to find out whether they exist or not.”
“That sounds interesting,” Maria and them agreed immediately.
“Wait, guys, do you even know what you’re saying? If you meet an evil minoshiro, you’ll die.”
As expected, Satoru was trying his hardest to dissuade us from this idea, in fear that his lies would be exposed.
“No one’s going to die,” Maria snickered.
“But how are you going to catch one? I forgot to mention, but cantus doesn’t work on them.”
“What do you mean?”
Who knows what he was saying out of desperation. We all turned to look at him.
“Um, I’m not too sure.”
“Explain it anyway.”
“…”
In the end, Satoru surrendered to our volley of questions. So our camp research topic was decided.
But thinking rationally, there’s no way that you’d be able to find so many rare animals. So we decided to keep the originally vague theme, “Species Around the Tone River”, so that in the case we couldn’t find anything, we could write about normal minoshiro, haythatchers, and stuff like that.
Let’s return to the summer camp. Not ten minutes after finding the warbler’s nest, I let out a little shout.
“Look! There’s a huge nest over there.”
For some reason, Shun raised his eyebrows doubtfully. “It looks like a yellow bittern’s.”
“Yeah. One that big probably is,” Satoru agreed.
It was rare that they had the same opinion, which somehow made this more believable.
“But it’s pretty crudely built.”
The three canoes converged around the nest. It sat a lot lower than the warbler’s nest, but was quite exposed in some areas. Any animal with sharp vision would be able to see it from the opposite bank.
Shun half-rose off his seat and peeked into the nest. “There are five eggs.”
My heart sped up momentarily when my bare shoulder brushed Shun’s as our boats stopped side by side. I pretended to study the eggs and nest carefully. Yellow bitterns are the smallest in the heron family, but still far bigger than the sparrow-sized warbler. Its nest was almost twice as big around, and the eggs were like bluish miniature chicken eggs.
Shun plucked an egg out of the nest and stared at it carefully. His jaw dropped.
“Woah, that’s surprising. Even though I half-expected it.”
“What?”
“Saki, hold it.”
He picked up the egg between two slender fingers and dropped it in the palm of my hand. It felt pleasantly cool, like ceramic.
“What’s wrong with it?”
“You don’t get it?” He picked up another egg and tossed it at Satoru.
I was surprised at how roughly he was treating them. “Wait, what are you doing? Those poor chicks.”
“Ahh,” Shun smiled slightly. “They’re fake. Look closely.”
He picked out another one and put it on top of a nearby rock. Before I could blink, he smashed it with a paddle.
The shell fractured, revealing no white or yolk, but a black, fetid clump. Even more surprising, an antler-like structure started sprouting out of it, branching off in all directions.
“What is that?”
“‘Devil’s Hand’. You’ve heard of it, right?”
Actually I hadn’t. I pinched a spike with the tip of my finger; it felt as thin as paper.
“Be careful, the edges are really sharp.”
The Devil’s Hand had veins coming from its core that gave it elasticity. And as Shun said, it was sharp, with barbs poking out along the edges.
“It’s usually folded up inside the egg, but when it shell is broken it comes bursting out.”
“Why?”
Satoru answered from behind me, “If a rat snake or rosary snake eats it, the egg will explode it its stomach. And when it tries to cough it back up, the barbs will just dig deeper into the stomach and eventually tear it open. Then the poison inside the black smelly part will leak into the snake’s body.”
How gruesome. Rosary snakes have evolved to eat eggs exclusively, raiding nests and eating all the eggs at once, digesting them later on. Their name comes from the way they look after they have gorged themselves on eggs. If one managed to eat multiple fake eggs, I can only imagine how terrible the aftermath would be.
The eggs did not bring life, but certain death.
I took out my notebook and made a quick sketch of the fake egg.
“There are a lot of fake warbler eggs in Pinewind, but this is the first time I’ve seen a fake bittern egg,” Satoru said wonderingly, holding the fake egg up to the sun.
“To lay an egg of this size, the bird must be pretty big, right?”
“Nope. It’s the same size as a haythatcher,” Shun said.
“How do you know?” Satoru looked at him.
Shun jerked his chin at something in front of us. What we saw surprised us.
There was a tiny face peeking out at us from the thicket of reeds. It looked just like a heron’s, with a beak-full of dried grass. But its eyes were red and lidless, scales covered its face, and the black lines running from the corner of its eyes made it obvious that it was not a bird.
The haythatcher slowly unwound itself, slithering up a thick stalk. Most haythatchers are a blackish or greenish brown, but this one was light green, like a young sprout. Although its beak was almost identical to a bird’s, you could tell that the rest of it had not changed much from its predecessor, the yellow snake.
It was building a new nest, deftly inserting the reeds in its mouth into various places around the nest. The bittern’s nest was built twined around the stalks of the reeds, but the haythatchers nest was more like a warbler’s. It looked similar enough to be deceiving.
“The fake egg might have been the haythatchers, since they have a habit of building multiple nests in the same area.”
I looked around at Satoru and saw him putting the fake eggs into his backpack. There was only one left in the nest.
“What are you going to do with those?” Maria asked.
“Just in case we don’t run into a blowdog or an evil minoshiro, we can write about these for our camp report. Fake eggs that look like bittern eggs are pretty rare.”
“But would taking them be bad for the haythatcher?”
“Since they’re fake, leaving one should be enough. As long as the nest isn’t empty, it should be okay.”
Satoru’s theory sounded okay, but if that really was the case, then wouldn’t the haythatcher only lay one egg to begin with?
At any rate, I thought the snake with the curious face was more cunning than we gave it credit for.
The haythatcher’s strategy for survival was brood parasitism.
Brood parasitism involves the parasitic parent laying its eggs in another animal’s nest. The egg hatches quickly, and the animal pushes the original eggs out of the nest. To me, this is probably the cruelest thing animals do in order to survive. In Africa, there is a kind of bird called the honeyguide, whose chicks are born with hooks on their beaks in order to kill the chicks in the host nest.
According to “The Natural History of the New Japan Islands”, a thousand years ago, there were only a few species of cuckoos that were brood parasites. But now, just within the area we were in, {even though there are animals that actually tended to their own young, even more are looking for a good nest to invade.} The world of birds is one of never ending struggle.
{The haythatcher sets up its convincing fake nest and eggs, and waits for birds to fall into its trap. It periodically patrols its nests, looking for new tributes.}
I thought back to the model of the haythatcher skeleton I one saw in our science class. In order to crush eggs, its precaudal vertebrae are thicker than to other snakes’, almost like a row of molars. It reuses the crushed eggshells as material for its own eggs. Because of the large amounts of calcium in its body, the eggs it lays are hard, like bird eggs, so baby haythatchers need beaks in order to break out.
But I never knew it used the Devil’s Hand as a defense against rat snakes and rosary snakes until today. Maybe I was asleep when the teacher taught us that.
This may be made up in hindsight, but I seem to remember feeling slightly uncomfortable at that time. It was a real-life example of the adaptation and natural selection mentioned in the textbook. In order to survive, even something like the Devil’s Hand could be evolved.
But as we set off up the Tone River again, all my questions and misgivings were blown away by the relaxing breeze.
As the day drew to an end, we steered our canoes toward the bank and went ashore. There were still faint traces of the group before us left on the sand.
The first task was to set up the tents. We dug holes for the bamboo tentpoles, and tied the canvas to them with leather strips. It was surprisingly tiring work. The easiest way was to have one person float the poles and canvas, and another person position them properly.
Next was food preparation. We had over three hundred kilos of supplies in our canoes, so food was plentiful. We gathered dried twigs and kindling nearby and lit a fire with our cantus. In a pot, we put purified water, rice, vegetables, meat, tofu skin and other foods to make rice gruel. Even though the only seasonings we had were miso and salt, everyone had worked up an appetite and we devoured the whole pot in the blink of an eye.
The sun had set while we were eating, and now we sat chatting around the campfire.
That scene is still burned vividly into my mind. I was tired after a whole day of activity and smoke from the fire was making my eyes water. Since this was our first big adventure outside the Holy Barrier, we were all more spirited than usual. As the sky faded from pale to deep blue, the fire lit up our faces with a red glow.
To tell the truth, I can’t remember the first half our conversations. I remember our daytime conversations perfectly well, but the more interesting topics we discussed that night continue to elude me. It’s as if those memories had been washed away.
At the time, I was wholly concentrated on the boy on the other side of the fire.
“…you’ve never seen it before, right Saki?” Satoru said all of a sudden.
What was he talking about that I’ve never seen before? Anyway, I’ll just give some noncommittal answer.
“Oh, who knows.”
“Huh? So you have?”
I didn’t have any choice but to shake my head.
“See, there’s no way,” Satoru said assertively.
I wanted to refute him, but since I didn’t know what he was talking about, there was nothing I could do.
“That…that’s it!” Satoru suddenly became very excited for some reason. “Just the other day, Shun and I saw it for the first time, right?”
Across the flames, I saw Shun nod. I couldn’t remember when the two of them had become so close.
“It must be something important, to be so heavily guarded.”
“Seems like it. Anyway, I don’t think any of us happened to see it when we were at Harmony School,” Shun said in his calm voice, smiling slightly. “There’s a wall right behind the door, so even if you open it, you still can’t see the inner courtyard. And the teachers are always really careful about opening and closing the door.”
Does this mean they actually went into the courtyard? I was surprised at their daring. The inner courtyard was a square surrounded by buildings on all sides, like the one in Harmony School, and while students were not explicitly forbidden to enter, there were no windows looking into it and people usually don’t get the urge to enter anyway.
“But twice I happened to get a glance while the Sun Prince was opening the door. And the image of bolts on the inside is burned into my mind.”
What would locks look like a thousand years from now? I can’t imagine. They used to just be pieces of metal with notches on them, and gradually became as sophisticated as the gears of a watch. But in our time, there are very few places that need locks, so their designs have become increasingly simple again.
On the inside of the door were a dozen small bolts, arranged radially. You couldn’t see where they were from the outside, so the only way to unlock the door was to have a picture with all the locations drawn on it or recall it from memory, and unlock them with your cantus.
“…and then, I kept an eye out while Shun unbolted the door. We slipped inside and shut the door. Holding our breaths, we went toward the second wall,” Satoru paused for dramatic effect, looking around at us.
“What was there?” asked Maria.
“Guess,” Satoru smiled.
“Not more graves like in the courtyard at Harmony School?” I said.
Mamoru’s eyes went wide, not having heard that story before. “What? There are graves there?”
“No, it was just a story I heard.”
“Stop trying to be all mysterious already. What was there?”
“…pretty much the same as what I saw at Harmony School,” Shun answered. “There are some plants, but most of the courtyard is empty. At the far end is a row of five brick storerooms with heavy wooden doors.”
“Did you look inside?” Maria asked.
“We were going to, but turned back,” Satoru said.
“Why?”
“There was a really gross smell coming from them, so we didn’t want to open them.”
Since Satoru was always telling really exaggerated stories with tons of superfluous detail, hearing him say something vague like this actually made us more interested.
“What gross smell?”
“It’s a really sharp smell…kind of like ammonia.”
“So you mean they were all toilets?”
Satoru didn’t respond to my joke.
“Not just that. I’m not exactly sure, but I thought I could hear voices coming from them too,” Shun said.
“What kind of voices?” I asked, even though I was getting scared.
“I don’t know, but they sounded like animal cries to me.”
This had to be a story they made up to scare us. But even as I thought that, a chill ran up my spine. We didn’t talk about it for the rest of the night.
Since we had to get up early the next day, we should have gone to sleep, but we all wanted a bit more adventure. Out of the blue, Mamoru suggested that we go night-canoeing. Maria agreed at once.
At first, I was a little apprehensive about rowing down the river with only starlight to guide us. It was an instinctive fear of not being able to see what was around me.
But it would be even worse to be the only one left behind, so I decided to join. We drew straws to see who had to stay behind to watch the fire, because if it went out, we would be lost in the darkness.
I forgot to mention that we had named our canoes. Mine and Satoru’s was Sakuramasu [Salmon] 2, Maria and Mamoru’s was Hakuren [Silver Carp] 4, and Shun’s was Kamuruchi [Northern Snakehead] 7. We marked the sticks for lots with the sharp end of an acorn and drew. Shun and I were in Hakuren 4 and Maria and Mamoru were in Sakuramasu 2. Unfortunately for him, Satoru was left to perform guard duty.
“This is bull,” Satoru complained, not knowing when to give up. He always said that the last of the lot was the luckiest, and this is what he gets for it. “You could see the different one if you looked into the can!”
“Sure, but no one looked,” Maria replied calmly.
In reality there was no need to peek at the bottom. If you paid attention, you could tell that the marked and unmarked sticks stood up a little differently.
Satoru sat down next to the fire grumpily as we left the camp.
“Don’t look at the fire,” Shun said.
“Why?”
“No one ever told you? That’s the number one rule to night canoeing. You have to get your eyes adjusted to the dark as soon as possible or you won’t be able to see anything.”
Shun got into the canoe first and turned around to pull me in. My heart soared and I forgot all about being scared of being lost on the dark river.
The canoe slid silently into the night.
Not being able to see anything made us wary of using our canti, so we rowed with the paddles for a while.
Even after my eyes adjusted, it was hard to see. The river reflected only the flickering lights from stars, and everything else was blackness. The only sound came from the small splashes of our oars.
“It feels like I’m in a dream,” I whispered. “Like this, it’s hard to know how fast we’re going.”
“You can tell if you put your hand in the water,” Shun said from behind.
I put down the paddle and slipped my fingers into the water. The water flowed swiftly through my fingers.
From somewhere far up ahead, Maria’s laughter came echoing back. Because of the silence of the night, or the stillness of the water, sound traveled much farther than it did during the day.
Shun stopped rowing and brought the paddle back into the boat.
“What happened?”
“If you keep rowing, there’s always going to be ripples, right…?” He seemed to be looking at the water.
I turned around and saw the campfire. We had traveled quite a distance downriver already.
“Yeah, but it’s a river, so there will always be some waves.”
Shun chanted his mantra. “Ready? I’m gong to flatten the surface.”
A ripple spread out from our boat, and the waves disappeared.
“Wow, that’s amazing.”
It was as if the water had been frozen over. Any imperfection was been smoothed out and the surface looked like polished glass, a giant mirror reflecting every star in the sky.
“Beautiful. It’s like I’m in space.”
I would remember this night until the day I died.
Hakuren 4 floated not on a river, but the Milky Way.
A voice came traveling on the wind, from far away. Satoru’s voice. I looked back and could barely see the fire.
“Should we head back?” Shun asked.
I shook my head silently.
I wanted to stay here for just a little longer. With Shun, in this perfect world.
Our canoe drifted through the starry sky. I leaned back on my right hand to enjoy the view.
After a while, I felt Shun’s hand, his slender fingers covering my own.
I wished time would stop. Just Shun and I, linked together like this forever.
I don’t know how long we stayed like this. What brought me back to reality was Satoru’s voice coming from far away. It seemed like he was panicking because no one was coming back.
“Let’s go,” Shun said.
This time, I nodded. It would be mean to leave Satoru all by himself for too long.
We swung the boat around. Shun used his cantus to propel us back up the river, and the stars scattered into the waves.
Just as we were hitting a comfortable speed, I was blinded by a feeling of uneasiness.
Exactly how fast were we going right now?
The river and its banks melted into the darkness, leaving me completely unable to recognize anything.
{In a situation where our senses fail, even having the god-like powers of cantus can’t dispel our uneasiness.}
Then, a thought came to me.
If we were to shut ourselves off from our senses, would we still be able to use our canti?
Then, following that.
Why was it that there was nobody who had lost their sense of sight or hearing living in our town?